


charon

by mikawritesthings



Category: Clone High
Genre: Crack, Flash Fiction, Gen, Metatextual, One Shot, all lowercase, angst for no good reason, dont even LIKE the show, i intend to fix that, inspired by a dumb meme, the source material is extremely straight and kinda bad, watch me project onto extremely shallow fictional characters, written while intoxicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26474866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawritesthings/pseuds/mikawritesthings
Summary: This one requires some explaining:1. I was watching Clone High with my BFF tonight while responsibly intoxicated.2. I became hypnotized by a screencap of Gandhi standing in a rowboat.3. This happened.
Relationships: Gandhi/Vincent Van Gogh (Clone High)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	charon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nausicaa_E](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nausicaa_E/gifts).



> If you unironically like this show, I am so, so sorry.

hashtag imagine

the ferryman comes to take your soul down the Styx but it's gandhi from clone high

he's somehow more... tolerable. less of an annoying horndog. less animated. he only cracks one stupid sex joke as he tells you your time is up. fuck, you realize, he isn't even smiling right now. god, what happened to him? then it hits you; he's older than he was in the original cartoon. something must have happened after he graduated from clone high. something far more damning than just growing up.

then the obvious hits you like a ton of bricks: no living man, young or old, operates the ferry to Hell. he barely grew up at all. he  _ died. _

you’re trying to figure out a diplomatic way to ask him how he died, but he already seems to know your question. just shakes his head and gestures toward the boat. “look, i can infodump my tragic backstory to you  _ after  _ you get in,” he says. you’d have no choice but to oblige anyway, so you step into the rickety little rowboat.

he’s off quickly, paddling the rowboat with a surprising amount of steady, wiry strength, especially for his small frame. obviously gotten used to the job by now. you’re about to ask the question properly, but he doesn’t give you the chance.

“that dumb cartoon didn’t give you the whole story,” he said. “there was more  _ to  _ us. me and the gang: linc, joan, hell, even kennedy. almost like… like we were full of holes, and someone besides the writers was coming to repair them.”

you make a very dumb innuendo. he shoots you a halfhearted finger gun.

“the show was two-dimensional in more ways than one, ya know?” he continues. “we were caricatures of the historical figures that scudworth got our dna from, but we were also  _ archetypes. _ joan, the goth with a heart of gold. kennedy, the douchey jock. cleo, the hot girl everyone wants to be with. good ol’ honest abe, the nice-guy outcast. and me, gan.” with this last sentence, he smiles a half-sardonic, half-pained smile. “the comic relief.”

you have more questions for him, and once again, he can tell. “you wanna interrogate me? i’ve been in too many interviews for this, bud. i’m givin’ you three questions.”

three? better choose wisely, then.

“who was repairing those gaps?” you ask.

“you already heard me say,” says gandhi. “we were from a cartoon, and  _ boy  _ was it bad. but someone behind the scenes--or maybe  _ outside  _ the scenes--had just enough of a soul left to retroactively make us better than we actually were. maybe it was like all the fanfiction joan used to write, or the dumb memes me and linc used to make. whoever was behind all that, though, we have them to thank for the bullshit that happened next.”

“what bullshit?” you say. it’s a follow-up question, but it still counts as your second.

a half-smile crosses his face. it’s far less punchable, far more genuine, than his usual shit-eating grin. “us having  _ lives,  _ for one thing! i already told you that joan wrote fanfiction. she was really good at it, too, even if it  _ was  _ les mis fanfic. lots of emphasis on gay ships between guys, for some reason. never understood why straight girls were into that-- of course, i didn’t understand ‘til  _ joan  _ realized she wasn’t straight.”

you express surprise at this, and he just chuckles. “yep, she’s bi. you think a chick with pink hair who dresses like  _ that  _ would be straight?”

fair enough.

“didn’t take the rest of us long to have a few realizations ourselves. linc realized he was bi. kennedy realized he was gay; i think he had a few honest talks with his dads about compulsory heterosexuality, stuff like that. cleo was kinda cagey about it, but i’m pretty sure she was gay, too. might’ve had a thing with joan at some point? i dunno; it… didn’t last.” he sighs. “me, though? it took me longer. this person i made out with once, tj, came out as a trans guy, and even when he was presenting more masc i  _ still  _ thought he was kinda hot. but it was spring of senior year by that time, and that’s around when everything just feels too late. too late to make any new friends, too late to make out with anyone you haven’t already made out with, and too damn late to tell your best friend that you… that you kinda…”

he doesn’t finish the sentence. he doesn’t have to. you want to tell him his experiences aren’t universal, but all this is weighing on you already.

“that’s when i actually started hanging out with vince. _ van gogh,”  _ he adds. “vince was a weird guy, but with all that brain baggage, i couldn’t really blame him. high school is a brutal time for anyone with a mental illness, even if modern technology is supplying you with enough meds to actually survive through it. he was kinda cool, though; said he wanted to figure out how to do an art-science degree in college, maybe do some research on how much our DNA influences who we  _ actually  _ grow up to be. asked if i could be his muse, and you know me, I couldn’t  _ not  _ be the center of attention. then…”

his face falls a bit. “we kissed. we didn’t make out, we  _ kissed.  _ that was the night before graduation.”

with an almost-unnoticeable bump, the ferry arrives at the dock on the Other Side.

you panic, realizing you still haven’t asked your last question. “but you never told me,” you say. “how did you  _ die?” _

the sardonic smile returns to the ferryman’s face. “the thing about human cloning technology,” he says, “is that scudworth had only developed it recently.”

you don’t remember stepping out of the boat, but somehow you’ve ended up out of the ferry, and onto the dock on the Other Side. mist is beginning to close in around you, blocking your line of sight, but a gap in the encroaching Veil is still allowing you to see the ferryman’s face.

“clones,” he says with a chilling finality, “are  _ unstable.” _


End file.
